Calif. officials could put end to high-paid city

VERNON, Calif. 
Fewer than 100 residents live in this small burg in the shadow of Los Angeles, surrounded by miles of gritty, occasionally smelly warehouses, meatpacking plants and manufacturing businesses. It is one of the least populated, most nondescript municipalities in the country - and one of the richest.

With 1,800 businesses providing an annual tax base of $334 million to a town with no parks, one school and only one residential street to maintain, there is plenty of money to go around.

There is so much, in fact, that Vernon's former city manager was paid $785,000 last year. The guy he replaced earned $1.65 million the year before and another city manager, who retired in 2005, pulls down an annual pension of $500,000.

But the money pot could be the 105-year-old city's undoing. Since it came to light earlier this year, state officials have moved to take away Vernon's status as a city, boot its elected officials out of their handsome City Hall offices and turn government operations over to Los Angeles County.

Although it was the high salaries, first reported by the Los Angeles Times, that got people's attention, proponents of putting Vernon under the county's control say the real issue is accountability - and their belief that in Vernon there is none.

"We cannot tolerate a situation where a handful of individuals are able to use an entire city as their own personal fiefdom with no impunity," said state Assembly Speaker John Perez, who introduced a bill earlier this month that would allow disincorporation of any city with fewer than 150 residents.

All but a handful of Vernon's residents (89 according to the most recent U.S. Census figures) either work for the city, its officials or are related to them. Most also live in city-owned houses or apartments controlled by city leaders.

The residents in turn routinely re-elect the same people, with some City Council members remaining in office 40 years or more.

Jaime Regalado, director of the Edmund G. "Pat" Brown Institute of Public Affairs at California State University, Los Angeles, has for years studied Vernon and other gritty industrial cities abutting the southern and eastern flanks of Los Angeles. He said he's never seen another quite like Vernon.

"They essentially have lifetime gigs," he said of the Vernon City Council. "Elections don't seem to be fair, very few of the residents, few as they are, bother to vote and the elections are not competitive anyway because the electoral base seems to be almost owned by those in power."

Four years ago, when a group of outsiders arrived in the city, registered to vote and attempted to run for office, Vernon officials declared the one residence they moved into a fire hazard and evicted them.

But Vernon residents say they prefer to focus on the positive. The city has its own police and fire departments, with prompt response times, they point out, and its own utility company, which provides businesses with reliable electricity generated by its own power plant.